Open-source still struggles with quality and consistency -- two things important in a medium where aesthetics are important.

That said, access to low-cost, high-resolution 3D printers (specifically resin-based printers) has enabled an explosion of the open-source Warhammer community (see https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedWarhammer/ for one example) -- and oddly, it's exactly the free market that is allowing this to flourish through services like Patreon, where artists are financially rewarded by supporters who receive a steady stream of fresh new .stl's on a regular basis.

Open-source Magic the Gathering has struggled a bit, but there are still a good number of fan projects that have done very well. In particular, open-source game clients such as XMage have been open-source competitors to MTGO, and open-source fan-project expansions such as Star Wars: The Gathering have managed to keep a high level of quality and consistency: https://www.starwarsthegathering.com/

When Warhammer and open-source collide, I'm always fascinated to see which aspect the discussion assumes deserving of attention: the miniatures, or the rules. The minis were historically protected by the rarity of injection moulding hobbyists, but in the era of 3d printing all bets are off. It's made easier by the casual Warhammer scene having long ago grown accustomed to "counts-as" models. Assuming it's around the same size and profile, you can use that WWII tabletop tank and call it a Leman Russ, so a Leman Russ with sliiiiiightly off dimensions or print quality is a shoe-in.

The rules, though, are a different matter. Warhammer 40k (the sci-fi variant) is a confusing blur of simultaneous, competing standards, controlled by an edition rulebook (which handles general gameplay rules and discussing physical aspects of the hobby like collecting and painting) and Codex books for each army, which aren't necessarily updated when a new edition comes out. The interactions of the army rules in each Codex and each edition's ruleset is chaotic at best, and often results in insane-looking letter-of-the-law strategies that exploit that interaction (early Tau firefish, anyone?), until it's fixed by a new Codex or edition.

The problem is, IMO, theorycrafting. The nerds that wind up playing your game have a lot more time, in aggregate, to break it than you do, and once one 'sploit has been found, disseminating it through the internet is trivial. Now everybody's doing it, and it's called "the current meta". If you don't want that, you've got to change something. You can add ever more and more complex pieces to the system, like they did with D&D3.5, or you can keep it moving forward and correct newly discovered imbalances live, as they do with WH40k (or, if you're a conspiracy theorist, correct some and intentionally introduce others).

I stopped trying to climb the endless mountain of 40k a long, long time ago. While I idly dream of a drop-in replacement ruleset that does away with the push-and-pull of edition-and-Codex rules-leapfrogging, I don't think something as complex as 40k can really be distilled into a timeless, unproblematic ruleset like chess or Icehouse or Homeworlds, especially if the intent is to continue releasing new models with new rules... especially if they're Space Marines, the Mary Sues of the 40k universe and the best-selling model line by far.

Anyway, I find it interesting that the parent comment took the approach it did. Note how Warhammer-as-open-source is about the free market providing new models, rather than the reverse-engineers "pirating" the entirety of Magic for XMage or creating new rules for the Star Wars variant. Warhammer has an "alternative client" too, in the form of the Vassal engine [0] (an LGPL 2d tabletop simulation system). Unlike XMage, it doesn't automagically enforce all rules, but then, neither does IRL live-action Warhammer. One could do something similar in Tabletop Simulator, of course.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_Engine

This is interesting -- quickly browsing through this list, I note that some of these .stls are literal alternatives to "sold" "products", like these legally distinct siege bunnies. [0][1] On the one hand, it's surely problematic for the original modeller, but on the other it's "just" similar (not identical!) instructions to the printer. Has this modeller "stolen" from the paid guy? How about from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

We all know and laugh at "illegal primes", but my intuitions, about how this applies to (what will eventually be, at its final stage) a physical object, are confusing me.

[0] https://haylandterrain.com/products/trojan-bunny

[1] https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3916454

How many successful open source projects aren't substantially supported by people getting paid to do that work as their job? One of the big challenges for most open source projects is getting enough time to make substantial progress.

I think one of the challenges here is that the rules are meant to support a theme and the open nature means there's a lot of scut work building a viable system, testing, and balancing it. As we've seen with other ares like video games which combine the creativity of story telling with relatively high expectations for completeness, that's a pretty challenging combination to get volunteers to support. Companies which do invest the time and resources are going to have a natural conflict about sharing that with potential competitors since they need to make pay and it seems pretty easy to imagine a lot of the outcomes ending up like Elastic/Amazon disputes.

One big problem with things like Warhammer and Magic (Magic being a more serious example) is there you really need a "dictator" who decides how "powerful" everything is, and can ban / weaken things which turn out to be broken. That type of thing seems consistently hard to do in open-source.

Dota managed to do it though. There were hundreds of dota versions people made and played before the origin of the modern day dota (called DotA allstars since it was a mesh of the favourite things from the other versions) appeared and everyone settled on it.

Edit: And the reason new dota versions stopped appearing after that is that the mapmaking community learned how to prevent people from opening and looking at the map source code, so it was no longer easy to change them. Maybe modern day dota would never have happened if that exploit wasn't found. But also modern day dota would likely never have happened if people couldn't easily modify and reupload others maps easily in the first place, since dota allstars drew so much inspiration from all the other wacky versions people made.

It was however only after DotA was handed[0] to the design/balancing BDFL IceFrog where it became the competitive game that we think of today. Before that, it was really just another yet popular "fun-map". He took advice from the best players and a trusted circle, but was known to have the last word on things.

There is something to say about the quality of a competitive game that is balanced around hardcore play versus a game that is balanced around a profit motive.

[0] I don't remember how the transition came to be.

5.54b was the last version before Icefrog, and then Icefrog took over development and the game slowly became the clean and interesting e-sport it is today. Was still just hobbyists doing it for fun though. People still don't know who Icefrog is, even after being hired by Valve he remains anonymous.

I guess a large reason why is because, especially with miniatures, it doesn't require any equipment to actually make the thing. Bear in mind 3d printers (or at least the ones the average person can buy) are still quite new, they were unheard of when I was into warhammer as a kid. If you wanted a miniature, you had to buy it from the people that made it. Even now, its easier, if more expensive long term, to go to a shop and just buy the things than to print one out.

As for magic cards, I remember as a kid printing off yu-gi-oh cards, but they never ended up being very good, even with access to a laminater (we had to go to the library to do that). It was a short lived idea sadly

It takes a great deal of energy to create good content. It seems most people are willing to spend money to reduce that burden for their own games or at a minimum willing to spend money to create an elevated starting point for their own efforts.

Magic is actually really enhanced by capitalism, imo. Trading cards is a really enticing aspect of it (which you can skip entirely if you want), each one having different cards is really interesting (you start with a novice set and can get better by acquiring the right cards). There is always that mystery of someone with really powerful cards, it creates an interesting atmosphere (and makes good cards really remarkable). Teaching children about economics is a good thing for me as well.

Games like Dominion (deck-building Magic) are really good, but you don't get this aspect of the game.

Now, maybe if everyone were given a random set of cards which you had to trade your way to glory that could be interesting as well. Maybe a victory allows you points or permits trading one of your cards for the opponent. In that case, Magic gets more meritocratic. However, this is essentially a parallel, magic-exclusive economy. And the glaring issue would be preventing the bleeding/interference of the real economy into this lateral economy.